What Fate Awaits Town and Country Shopping Center?

After being away for four years I noticed that parts of MacArthur Boulevard have been razed and rebuilt, other parts have shuttered and gone to seed with peeling paint and tilting structures.

The last remnants of the previous recession are fading  At first it looked like the end for Town and Country when I leaned of Burlington Coat Factory's future move out to the old K-mart on Wabash, but after a little digging it looks like the shopping center is gentrifying out its current tenants for more lucrative prospects.

The completion of Hy-Vee and what appears to be the resurrection of the outlet mall project down by Scheels at the south end of the boulevard might bring more traffic to those areas, and it looks like the notorious MacArthur Park Apartments are undergoing a similar strategy of gentrification.

There may soon not be much available retail space to lease at Town and Country Shopping Center.

• Town and Country, at 50, is focus of MacArthur Blvd. efforts. (03/27/20110
• Local business notes: Burlington Coat, Outback signed for Kmart space. (11/26/2016)
• Commercial Property search results for Town and Country Shopping Center.
Local business notes: On-and-off outlet mall on again in Springfield.
• Upgrades at MacArthur Park Apartments will bring new name, income guidelines, rent prices.

After School Nightmare Special

This afternoon around 2:30 PM on Wabash a school bus was at a stop light ready to make a left turn on one of the streets heading into Jerome.

There was at least two car lengths between the bus and the car in front of it. The driver took his foot off the brake and the bus lurched forward and the driver pressed hard on the brake again, jolting the bus to a stop.

This happened about five or six times. At first I couldn't figure out what was going on. Maybe the bus has a stuck accelerator?

Then it occurred to me, maybe the bus driver was feeling a little vindictive toward the kids. I imagined their books and whatever else wasn't tied down sliding off the seats.

Affordable Shred Wake Up Service in Leland Grove

"First it was the sound of beeping" she said. Then she described a strange grinding noise to which she awoke at 6:30 AM on 11/15/2016.

The truck was parked in the driveway right under her bedroom window. "He could have gone anywhere else, He could have gone to the park" she said. "They must grind up more than just paper" she said.

I suppose if you want to annoy your neighbors, one way to do this is to call such a service very early in the morning, but operating a commercial noise nuisance just feet from a residence outside of normal business hours makes one complicit.

Springfield Ranks Number Six, or Five maybe.

According to Decatur's Herald & Review, Springfield ranks 6th place behind Danville, (a blank page), Rockford, Harvey and East St. Louis, in the lineup of most dangerous cities in Illinois, .

I don't know about the mystery blank space, maybe it's under contention between two other rivals.

The crime map here at SPFLDNET hasn't been updated for literally 4 years and I apologize for the inconsistent and non-specific record-keeping. I may dump it and start fresh someday soon. I hope Police at SJ-R can keep up the good work.

Congratulations Tammy Duckworth, I guess?

The way things have turned out it might be a long, cold experience for the new Senator from Illinois.

The Republicans won the Senate, but not by a Super Majority, which means things are still going to be the same as they ever were since the House and Senate were taken from Democrats two years after Obama won the white house in 2008.

There was a message sent back then but apparently nobody got it.

The Establishment Democrats were so obsessed with power that they sidled up to big Wall Street donors and threw Bernie Sanders under the bus.

I heard that a friend of someone I know, who is an attorney and a Republican, actually still wrote in Bernie Sanders. Do we know how many people wrote in Bernie Sanders? The corporate media will never let us know.

See the March 8, 2016 prediction by Daily Kos

During the Primary it was clear that Sanders held a wider margin ahead of Trump than Clinton, but the shining gold from the ruling donor class was too blinding for the Neoliberal Democrats. Even Daily Kos was warning us about being too ambitious.

Now it's time to pay the piper.They said Trump would destroy the Republican Party, but it turns out Hillary and the DNC destroyed themselves.

Kirk or Duckworth: A campaign profile

This was inspired by the regretful comment Mark Kirk made at the last debate with Tammy Duckworth. The article can be found at the State Journal-Register.

Please, for all of our sakes, take some time BEFORE YOU VOTE to inform yourself about your choice for United States Senate from the state of Illinois.

• Open Secrets
• Mark Kirk
• Tammy Duckworth
• Ballotpedia
• Mark Kirk
• Tammy Duckworth
• Project Vote Smart
• Mark Kirk
• Tammy Duckworth
• GovTrack
• Mark Kirk
• Tammy Duckworth